Teaching with MySpace?

Several of my coworkers and I were having a conversation recently about the staggering number of people who have myspace and facebook accounts. Someone brought up the point that it would be great if these sites could be used for more educational purposes rather then just posting pictures and collecting friends. A challenge to teaching in today's modern, fast paced world is to get and keep student's interest on the lesson. Using something "cool" like MySpace or Facebook in the lesson might get students interested much more quickly. I found a video about a study that was done at the University of Minnesota that addressed the benefits of using these social networking sites on students.

http://www1.umn.edu/urelate/newsservice/Multimedia_Videos/social_network.htm

I thought one of the most interesting comments in the video was that parents and teachers help students learn how to use other "dangerous" tools, like how to drive a car, and that teaching with and learning about MySpace should be handled the same way. I'm sure this would be be biggest obstacle for a teacher wanting to use these sites in their classroom. Who knows, maybe in the future we'll see more teachers using social networking sites in their classrooms!

(I do apologize for not posting the video here directly. I think there was something wrong with the embed code on their site because it wasn't working!)

Alice 2.0 – Free! From Carnegie Mellon

What is Alice? Alice is a free programming environment developed by Carnegie Mellon with Randy Pausch (remember, The Last Lecture?http://http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo ) as one of the lead developers. It is a free, educational learning tool for teachers to get their students interested and excited about programming. It teaches beginner programmers, computer programming in a 3d environment complete with objects, represented by 3D characters, methods, functions, variables, and parameters and can display code in a java like syntax. Alice starts with a world that you can choose such as world that has snow and ice. You can then choose an object form a gallery of objects and there are many galleries to choose from such as Japan, Egypt, a beach, a skateboard park, a city, and an amusement park among others. You simply drag an object into a world, such as dragging a skater into an ice rink world. Then, just by right clicking, you can assign different methods to that object, such as skate one step forward, backward, twirl, etc. Commands always animate so you can quickly see what your method has produced. Since commands in programming are sequential, you can choose the skaters next step like turning 1 revolution. I know a school where they teach this method of programming and the kids are really excited about programming and the response has been tremendous. There are books that can be purchased to accompany this program and there is also a community support group for your programming or technical questions. In addition to Alice for high school students, Carnegie Mellon also produced a Storytelling Alice program for middle school students. It’s free and great for any newcomer to programming. It’s fascinating, check it out! http://www.alice.org/

Using Wikipedia in the Classroom

When I was student teaching, I can remember one of my student teaching cooperating teachers telling me about what a problem Wikipedia was with her students. She said all of them were using it and she was going to make a rule that it could not be used at all. When I asked her why, she told me because it wasn't accurate and that "most" of the information was wrong.

For a long time, I used this same mentality with my students as well. When I saw Wikipedia as a resource on a paper, I'd take points off. Now that I teach online, I see even more cases of students using Wikipedia. So, I decided to do a bit of research on the site myself to see if it was valid or not.

I've since realized that Wikipedia can be an extremely useful research tool for students. I advise them to use Wikipedia as a starting place for their papers- to use it to find additional sites or other points to research on a topic. I also found a very interesting way to use Wikipedia in the classroom that I thought I'd share with everyone. Many teachers have started using Wikipedia as a learning tool. They have their students research articles to find out if they are valid. Another teacher, who commented on this blog , had her students research their town history to add information to their Wikipedia article.

In fact, Wikipedia itself appears to be getting in on the trend of using their site in the classroom. The Wikipedia Signpost (which is a "community-written and community-edited newspaper, covering events and stories related to Wikipedia") has a great article about classroom ideas. You can read the article here. Enjoy!

Great Site - Classroom 2.0!

I found a great website for those people who are interested in breaking out of the boundaries of a classroom and collaborating with other teachers, students, administration, and integration technologists in transforming education. It is a supportative, social community with suggestions, experiences, and stories on how they use or want to use technology in their classrooms. There are wikis, blogs, online meetings, many different groups (ArtTeach, MAC Classroom 2.0, Distance Collaborations, High School Math Teachers, Implementing Instructional Technologies Innovations, Second Life, etc) that you can join, and a ton of other extremely interesting videos, photos, and chats to join and see. Check it out…you won’t be disappointed! http://www.classroom20.com/

Study Island. Web-Based Standardized Test Prep.

I've never heard of Study Island until my internship at Sayre Area High School started. Study Island is basically a web-based state assessment preparation for students. Since most states require students to take standardized tests, Study Island provides school districts opportunities to prepare their students for standardized tests. It seems to be an efficient alternative to paper based solutions while allowing for schools to meet standards based education.

Great Tool for Teachers and Students! Schoolwires

Recently, I attended a meeting at our School District about changing the way we maintain, update, and change our website. We met with a rep from http://www.schoolwires.com/, a company from State College, PA that offers a variety of web tools for teachers, students, parents, administration, and the community to utilize. Schoolwires will create your website to your specifications, host the website, and enable teachers to create their own websites without having to know a line of code. Word, xhtml, FrontPage, and Dreamweaver are just a few of the tools teachers can use to create their website. In addition, teachers can upload their homework every night and include important dates on a district calendar. Blogs and wikis will be available to the students, which will open up a whole new way of learning and communicating with each other and their teachers. The entire implementation will take up to 6 months so as we progress through the design and integration, I will report on our progress and any new and exiting features that I learn about!

Teacher eLearning Resources

While I had previously heard of wikis and what they are in “textbook terms,” the common craft explanation was much easier to understand. Both informative and entertaining, they really stated what wikis are in plain English! I will have to share this with my colleagues who are involved in the CFF grant who are as confused as I am with all the technology applications that we do not know how to use. This sparked a search for other easy to understand or use contexts of eLearning. One website that I came across that has decent applications for teachers is http://teachers.henrico.k12.va.us/elearning/. It lists some online resources for specific concepts one might be teaching; I was excited to come across one that I just used last week in my classroom called GeoGebra!